Over the past few months, it's been hard to avoid the rising swell of hype surrounding James Cameron's return to blockbuster movie making. Yes, the rumbling juggernaut that is Avatar will soon be upon us to sweep everything aside in its 3D wake. So before witnessing the cinema spectacle, gamers can dive into James Cameron's Avatar: The Game to experience a momentous clash between humans and aliens on the distant planet of Pandora. Despite packing suitably lush production values, the game's monotonous missions and overly familiar gameplay makes this movie tie-in feel a few dimensions short of a masterpiece.

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The game is set before events in the forthcoming movie, as simmering tensions between the human RDA force and Pandora's indigenous Na'vi begin to bubble over. However, a big issue with Avatar the game is that it does a fairly limited job of setting up the story and almost assumes that the player is already familiar with the world, which is a stretch considering that the movie isn't even out yet. The situation is further complicated by a pretty weak and forgettable narrative.

At its heart, Avatar taps into the central moral theme of an aggressive, occupying force clashing with an indigenous population better attuned to the local environment. The Vietnam comparisons seem to ring true, except that there's no Wagner plumbed into the RDA speakers. After selecting a character from a range of male and female options, the player arrives on Pandora as Ryder, a signals specialist summoned to the planet due to a rare ability to assimilate the form of the Na'vi as part of the Avatar programme.

In the opening stages, the player is firmly in the RDA's camp, getting to grips with the mysterious planet and its many dangers. However, about an hour into the game, the player has to make a choice either to side with the humans or go with the Na'vi (thus retaining their Avatar form permanently). The dilemma is pretty well weighted as the moral onus rests with the indigenous race but the RDA offers the overriding lure of superior firepower. So choosing the Na'vi involves using the world around you to fight, whereas siding with the humans brings guns aplenty to tear the planet apart.

Regardless of which side the player chooses, Avatar is essentially a third-person shooter mixing combat with vehicle sections and platforming. The Na'vi campaign involves plenty of God Of War style combat, slashing the RDA soldiers into ribbons. Instead, the RDA campaign is basically a standard action experience with a distinct absence of morals.

The player can hold four weapons at any one time and these can be swapped around on the fly. The Na'vi have mostly melee weapons, such as blades, clubs and staffs, but they also hold a reasonable powerful bow and a gun, albeit with limited ammo. Alternatively, the RDA has some serious tools, such as assault rifles and flame throwers. Defeating enemies brings XP to the player to level up weapons and open up new special skills, such as camouflage and fast running.

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At first, Pandora looks fantastic and there is a wonderful sense of scale to the world. The lush undergrowth and big sweeping mountains really bring forth the feel of the planet and its many dangers. Massive RDA heli-ships fire rockets into cliffsides, rumbling rocks down to the floor in great action set pieces. There are also little lagoon areas which weird and wonderful animals flock around. The character animations are equally good, especially the Na'vi, and the overall sense of polish in the presentation is strong. However, the scenery rapidly blends into monotony, largely because the game does not offer enough atmosphere or substance to truly bring it to life.

The game's biggest problem is that it is so uninspiring. Missions are familiar and repetitive, with an endless stream of fetch quests just seeming utterly mundane. As the action remains at a pretty constant plateau without ever significantly ramping upwards, the game's early promise rapidly wears off, leaving only a bog standard action experience behind. There are other problems too, such as the frustratingly difficulty in control vehicles, such as the winged Na'vi Banshees and the RDA buggy.

Dotted throughout Pandora are portals which lead to a conquest mini-game. This basically involves dominating a planet to earn XP, but feels rather tagged on and underdeveloped. There is also a range of multiplayer modes supporting up to 16 players, including standard deathmatch and capture the flag options, along with team-based objectives. The modes are enjoyable at first, but quickly lose their appeal and are unlikely to hold the attention for long.

A big draw for the game is its incorporation of 3D technology, which means that anyone lucky enough to have a 3D-ready TV set can enjoy the world of Pandora in all its glory. This is a great addition, but it's just a shame that not many people will realistically be able to try it out due to the scarcity of 3D TVs. Curiously, Avatar is actually too long as a game experience and simply outstays its welcome. There is good replayability in the two main campaigns, which offer different weapons, approaches and nuances, but this does not hide the basic, repetitive and monotonous game design underneath.

Overall, James Cameron's Avatar is certainly not a bad game. The level of presentation is really strong and it's clear that a decent amount of effort has been lavished on lifting the title above the graveyard of movie tie-ins. However, Ubisoft Montreal has unfortunately not gone quite far enough. Despite the interesting moral set-up of an occupying force taking on the indigenous Na'vi, the story never really grips the attention to give the action purpose. Cookie-cutter missions and occasionally irritating controls further muddy the field. The biggest issue, though, is that players are on a mysterious, beautiful and dangerous alien planet yet somehow the game makes that really boring. Let us hope that the forthcoming movie packs more of a punch when it finally reaches cinema screens.